Honestly, I love shooters that give me a Wolf3D feel. They are simple, easy to play, and generally don't waste your time. Unfortunately, this one is rough... very rough. I chose not to refund this because I feel like there is heart and potential, but this is a poor showing. Art was consistent throughout which was a positive and the music was passable.
The level design is very basic with random rooms where to leave you need to kill everything that spawns. Unfortunately, the levels themselves have no decoration, no environmental items placed throughout. Just hallways, walls, floors, sometimes you get a big room! The mini-map in the lower left hand corner is a neat concept, but when you get to areas such as small mazes it is little help. The only area that started to feel like they were using the limited variety of level design elements was hell, and even then that ended after E4M1. The start of E2M1 was the only "unique" level. The monster closet rooms were boring, since it was just stand in a corner and shoot left and right, then crossbow when they get stuck on a wall because pathing is basic.
Monster design was interesting. The sprites were decent like most of the art in the game. The issue was monsters would hitch in walls often, marionettes would spawn oftentimes unable to move or be hit with projectile weapons, allowing you to just walk through them. If you stand in the square that is a door, projectile weapons can't hit you and very few monsters can pass through. The brains in the jar, the flying skulls, and the eyes are honestly the only 'dangerous' enemies in the game, and they are the easiest to kill. They are fast, have odd projectiles (for eye and skull), and are persistent and able to cross through doors (for the skull and brain on legs, the eyes do not move). The plant monsters were neat and had a cool attack, but only used in one Episode. Some mobs such as the walking guys with the plasma arm oftentimes are unable to even shoot their gun, as projectiles won't spawn. Monsters in boss fights would often spawn out of 'range', allowing you to ignore them (the last one is like this for ALL monsters, just stand in one of the massive side rooms full of ammo and they will just stand there and look at you while you Western Union their boss bullets from the comfort of the corner).
Bosses had potential but bullet hell in a system where there is no run or extra movement mechanics is a poor idea. The last two bosses were the easiest, with the last boss being easy by standing in a weapon room and shooting him from there, as spawned monsters won't aggro back to you. The plant boss was the worst, but also the most involved. The spawning monsters in waves and the AoE bullet hell meant it took many tries to actually beat it. It was un-fun and almost caused me to quit. It was hard because you needed almost every shot of ammo to beat it. Thankfully if you die on this boss, your ammo stays the same, so you can die several times while picking ammo up and not fire a shot until you are back to full on what it gives you.
The guns felt horrible and I think this is the worst shotgun I have used in an FPS in years. They have poor sound effects and feel very weak. There is no on screen sprite for the .45 caliber, but it is the most useful weapon next to the axe. The crossbow is a railgun, allowing you to shoot through multiple enemies. The heavy machine gun winds up, does a lot of damage. The plasma gun winds up, does a lot of damage. The plasma rockets do a small blast when fired, like the Great Value of rocket launchers.
The shotgun is horrible and the worst to use. The projectile spread sucks, damage is super inconsistent even at point blank, and randomly your character will say something and wipe blood off of his visor even if you shot something 200 miles away. It's double barreled too, so you get poor results at twice the price.
If you want to know what the workhorse it though, it's the axe. The axe will carry you through every non-monster closet or boss fight if you just keep moving and swinging. Monsters can't melee when moving, so you can just fly around and whack away. I hate cheese like this, but the game's lack of variety and difficulty save for an instance here or there means it's better to get it done than play it out.
I stuck it out and beat it in one sitting, 3.4 hours roughly and honestly it could be done in half that time if I played it again. I think the team behind it has room to grow, room to improve. I can tell there was heart put into it, and a part of me feels like it was rushed out half finished to hit a deadline. I also think getting a new set of beta testers for future titles may be a good idea as there was so many bugs/glitches/oddities that it actually made the game easier as many monsters were unable to act, even when I'd play a level again just to -see- if it was a one time thing. It tells me beta testers dropped the ball and failed to play through levels (E4 is full of this).
